STUDIO DIARY #12

( Written by Butch Vig )

A day in the life of a studio rat.

9:15 AM The glare from the sun through the window wakes me up. I stagger down to the kitchen and throw on a pot of coffee. Turn the TV on and flip back and forth between my two favorite channels: CNBC and the Weather Channel. Mixed news. The stock market has not crashed, but it's going to be really hot and humid.

10:25 Put a rough mix of a new song we're working on (tentative title: Piss on your Parade…subject to change) and jump on the treadmill. I usually run for about a half hour each morning and take mental notes while listening to whatever we accomplished the day before. And even though I really, really hate working out, I gotta try to stay in shape for the next Garbage Tour. Working six days a week in a recording studio does not give you abs of steel!

11:05 Pouring sweat. I jump into the shower and dress quickly…my entire wardrobe consists of about 10 pair of black trousers, and a dozen or so black tops, and 20 pair of black socks, so not much brain power is needed for my choice of clothes… however, it is going to be sweltering today, so I choose the lightest black T-shirt I have. What a fashion statement!

11:25 I head off to Smart Studios, but first make my daily stop at Ancora Coffee, still the band's first choice for tasty caffeinated beverages. Normally I would get a triple short cappuccino with a shot of vanilla, but it's so hot that I settle for a Cold Stare…a slushy granita with an extra shot of cold espresso. Yum!

11:50 Arrive at Smart. The city is doing construction on Baldwin street, and the entire block looks like we've been shelled by howitzers for weeks. It's become a pain in the arse trying to find a parking spot. I don't want to park a half mile away. I finally leave my car in an NO PARKING AT ANYTIME zone. We'll see if I get lucky.

12:05 PM I check my email. Lots of correspondence from friends. Not too much pressing business. Email from Wez at Mushroom UK: good news! Both of our albums are back on the charts for some inexplicable reason. Email from my brother Stick: he wants to play golf this week to warm up for the upcoming Hack ‘n Slash golf tourney. Probably a good idea, as I have not played much this summer. Email from our management: conference call this Thursday to catch up on business. Email from B-B-Cues Galore: more great news! The gas grill we ordered for Smart is arriving today. With some luck we might get it properly assembled and barbecue some brats on the patio tonight. Yah der hey!

12:15 The Queen and Billy Bush, our engineer arrive. They are both carrying large lattes from Ancora. The Queen jumps on her computer to check email, and Billy heads into the studio to fire everything up.

12:30 Duke arrives. We enter Studio B and try to figure out what to work on. There are over thirty song titles scribbled in various colors on our makeshift bulletin board. We've been writing/recording for about two months, and most of the songs keep morphing into something different each time we work on them. Since most of them are working titles, it's hard to remember what piece of music goes with each title. What exactly does Flyswatter sound like? What is the Candyass Riff? What is Another Bad Idea ? Probably another bad song idea.

12:45 Steve arrives. He is now the proud papa of a beautiful baby girl, Ruby Marker, and despite very little sleep lately, he's looking good today. He has brought along some new toys: efx pedals for guitar by Lovetone and the Mooger fooger . He daisy chains them together and starts running some loops through them. It's really loud. It's really noisy. It's early and I need another cappuccino!

1:20 We decide to work on Now That You've Got Me. The verses are sounding cool…kinda trancy and groovy, and the chorus is really noisy but hooky…fuzz bass, detuned guitars, and a great scratch vocal melody that The Queen sang a couple weeks earlier.. But the four bar build from the verse into the chorus sucks. First we have Billy just cut out the four bars in Pro Tools, and it doesn't sound right: too abrupt. So he puts the four bars back into the song and Duke and Steve plug in their guitars. For quite some time, we try working some new chords into the pre-chorus, but nothing seems to click. We end up pitch bending an orchestral sample so it sounds kinda creepy, and Steve records a thrashy punk rock riff. We're not completely satisfied, but the arrangement sounds better than before, so we decide to move onto another song.

3:40 Check email. Freedy Johnston will be arriving in Madison tomorrow to start looking for a house to rent, and is wondering if we have any leads. I worked with Freedy several years ago when I produced This Perfect World, and after falling in love with Madison, he has decided to record his next album here. Email from Stick Two aka: The French Stick: he wants to know if I'm going to The Kiss concert at the Kohl Center tonight. I would love to go, but I decline because I get the feeling tonight might be a late one. I email back that maybe I could meet him for a beer when we split.

4:05 Tom, one of the staff engineers, volunteers to make a run to Ancora. Who would like a latte? I do! I do! We all raise our hands, and he takes down the order. Also, the grill has arrived, and the Smart Crew are going to put it together when he gets back from the coffee run.

4:40 We start working on Till The Day I Die, which we first started work on at the end of the last tour. I wanted to toughen up the groove, so Billy ran a stereo mix of the drums to the Rocky Meyer, an old analog compressor built by Roger Meyer in the mid 70's. It has this amazing sound to it: when you put drums through it, they end up sounding like distorted garbage cans, and it kind of makes my playing sound like Keith Moon (I wish!)….Duke ands Steve come up with a few noisy riffs on guitar that sound pretty cool around the Queen's vocals. We decide to move on.

5:40 Check email: O.G. Abraham, our brilliant live sound engineer, is sending Billy and me some tasty cigars he has discovered. Sounds good. Maybe Billy and I should smoke some tobac right now! We convene to the balcony for a proper smoke, but it's not very relaxing. Besides being about 95 degrees, the sound barrage from the construction on Baldwin street is intense. Forget about it…lets just go back to work!

6:05 We start working on Shut Your Mouth, another song that started from a jam last month. The verses are sounding kinda funky, with a spastic drum groove and wah wah guitar. No vocal yet, except for the lines Shut your mouth, try not to panic in the chorus. The Queen has an idea: she wants to try and fit all these absurd conversational phrases she picked up while on tour into the verses. She goes into the studio and does several takes. Realizing that she needs a few minutes to figure out how to make the phrasing flow, we decide to come up with a short bridge to get from the chorus back into the verse. I quickly program a simple drum pattern on the MPC 1000 and then randomly cut the drums up in Pro Tools so they sound off! Billy puts the drums through the Rocky Meyer. Sounds brilliant! (Hell, lets run the whole song through it!!!) Duke starts playing these short, white noise bursts on guitar, and DJ Sloppy (aka: Steve Marker) puts down some whacked out turntable drop-ins. All of a sudden, we have a bridge! Hearing the new part, the Queen is inspired to run back into the studio, and comes up with a great new vocal hook for the bridge (could this be slight dis on Christina Aguilera…maybe, maybe not!). She then goes back and re-sings the verses, and they sound amazing…all the phrasing flows seamlessly and the funky flow of the song has taken on a new edge! Billy burns a rough mix onto CD, so I can go listen to it in my car. Then I realize I better go check on it anyway, just in case I got towed. The car is still there. The construction has stopped. The song sounds cool. I head back to Smart.

8:35 Sometimes we forget to eat if we're in the middle of recording, and end up eating lofi pizza at midnight. But not tonight. The homeboys have cooked up a Wisconsin barbecue extravaganza! Wow! Chicken and brats from the grill, baked beans, and home made tater salad. We settle into the lounge upstairs, and while we chow down, we watch the latest installment of League of Gentleman. If you have not seen this, check it out..it's truly twisted and highly recommended. (While I'm on the subject, you should check out The Kingdom. It's a TV show centered around a Swedish doctor sent to work in Denmark, and his encounters with the eccentric freaks who work and inhabit the hospital. Directed by Lars Von Trier, it is one of the creepier films I've seen lately…kind of like ER meets David Lynch's Eraserhead.)

9:15 Check email. There's an MP3 file from Dreamworks of a new single mix for Turn Off The Light, by Nelly Furtado. Her debut album comes out in September, and I'm a big fan. I drag the file onto my Realplayer and plug headphones into my G3. Sounds freakin' great, so I shoot an email back to dreamworks with a big thumbs up.

9:25 The Queen was strumming an acoustic guitar throughout dinner, and came up with some lyrics for a new song, so we decide to capture the moment. Let's record it now! The working title is So Like A Rose, and it has a dark, Velvet Underground feel to it. I program a quick drum loop and adjust the tempo for the Queen's guitar strumming. Duke and Steve plug their guitars directly into the board, and we're ready to record in less than five minutes. Billy turns the lights down, and we slip into a gorgeous first take. We don't really know what the arrangement is, but as soon as the Queen starts singing, we wing it, intuitively shifting easily between the verse and chorus by following her dynamics. And it's a great first take, even though it ends up being over ten minutes long. The guitars shimmer and chime under the Queen's haunting vocal. Should we edit it down? Nah, let's leave it for now. Should we try another take? Yes, we concur. But the next take sucks. Let's do some overdubs on the first take. Steve comes up with another loop for the verse with a trippy, backward guitar bend, and Duke puts down several e-bow tracks that give the bridge an orchestral feel. There's no bass on the track, so I eq the kick drum to start moving some massive air in the sub woofers, overdub a tambourine, and pile on the reverb. Then the Queen goes in and overdubs eight tracks of backing vocals for the outro. Wow! Sounds freakin' awesome! We listen to a playback four or five times, and decide to leave it alone, lest we ruin it with too many overdubs.

12:15 AM Check email: Stick Two said the Kiss concert was quite an extravaganza. I email him back that I'll meet him for a beer at the Café Montmarte, our unofficial headquarters and watering hole in downtown Madison. I'm feeling kind of giddy. Today has been a good day. I wish everyday was this inspired. And even though I know we're gonna come back and do it all over again tomorrow, I feel optimistic that if we keep having days like today, we'll eventually turn all this garbage into something beautiful!

Enhance the trance
Butch